The present invention relates to the field of training, such as training for members of an organization, more particularly to the field of corporate training of employees and contract workers. Griffin (U.S. Pat. No. 4,764,120) entered the field with a computerized test-taking and balloting system comprised of several keypads that are hardwired from students' desks to a classroom router. The system may be employed in several classrooms, in which case the test results or ballots accumulated in each classroom router are sent to a central server. Using their individual keypads, students may enter test answers to be scored or ballots to be counted, but Griffin's system is not interactive, and cannot function as a training tool except to the extent to which training results can be measured using the standard classroom lecture and exam format. Furthermore, in his means plus function methodology, neither Griffin's claims or disclosure encompass any form of wireless operation.
Houlihan (U.S. Pat. No. 6,535,713 B1) recognized the importance of interactive corporate training. In Houlihan's claimed system, each student participates with an individual workstation, defined in Houlihan's Description as including a communications bus, a processor, and dynamic storage media. The student workstation of Houlihan's preferred embodiment even features 64 MB of main memory.
Most training videos and lecture-based training systems currently being used are less affordable than they could be, partially because of the investment required for multiple trainee workstations. More importantly, currently used training systems are less successful than desirable because they are dry, one-dimensional, and unable to maintain user interest for periods of time long enough to convey the desired messages.